There’s been an ongoing debate since the 2024 election about how and whether the Democratic Party needs to build a bigger tent in order to win moving forward.
This debate is a distraction from the real problem at hand: Candidates who have neither the clarity nor backbone to navigate competing pressures. Without that, the tent has no pole.
First: For those of you lucky enough to be totally removed from this discourse, let me summarize for you what the argument is…
Immediately after the 2024 election, pundits and operatives began clamoring for Democrats to build a bigger tent and stop issuing litmus tests.
In particular, organizations and pundits like Third Way or Matt Yglesias got real mad at “The Groups” — which they defined as issue-specific organizations who ask candidates to fill out questionnaires in order to earn their endorsement — and who critics argued were instrumental in making our party smaller.
Specifically, they point to the ACLU questionnaire in 2019 that asked candidates whether they supported gender-affirming care for undocumented inmates, which critics argue gave Trump the ammo needed to run the infamous “they/them” ads during the 2024 election. (Semafor has a pretty good TLDR on the argument here.)
Third Way in particular has called for candidates to refuse to take any pledge or fill out a questionnaire of any kind.
This all came to the forefront in the last week, as one of the candidates in the Michigan Senate primary, Abdul El-Sayed, is hosting a rally with extremely popular Twitch streamer Hasan Piker.
Hasan is a controversial figure — he’s said some shit I absolutely do not agree with, and while I absolutely think people should go on his podcast, I probably wouldn’t have brought him to a rally — but he has an audience that people universally agree Democrats need to reach: Young, mostly disillusioned men.
Once this news came out about El-Sayed’s rally with Hasan, Third Way decided they did not like the way the tent was being expanded. So they issued a questionnaire (!!) to El-Sayed, asking him what he did or did not agree with Hasan on.
Lauren Egan of The Bulwark has a great summary of the conflict. (Spoiler: I talked to her for this story and am quoted in the piece.)
Now that you’re caught up — my thoughts:
On “The Groups”
First, there is no single reason why Kamala Harris lost — a single ad or policy position did not make or break an election, especially one in which she was fully tied to the incumbent in an anti-incumbent wave.
The criticism against The Groups is misdirected. The job of issue advocacy groups is, obviously, to advocate for their issues. That includes trying to push the Overton window, and trying to change what the center is. (Centrism doesn’t exist without people defining the ends of the spectrum.)
Now, some organizations conflate the community they are fighting for with the community they are speaking for in a way that may be strategic for them but can be stretching the truth a bit. But that’s their job!
The group of actors failing in this equation are the candidates.
Someone running for office or serving in office needs to (1) know what they actually believe and (2) be discerning enough to tell when an organization or advocate is full of shit. Then they need to be strong enough in their values to tell advocates when they disagree! Questionnaires may have their usefulness, but candidates need to treat them as a chance to reflect on what they actually believe, not a checklist to pass or fail.
That might end with a candidate being yelled at, online or IRL. Congrats, if people are unhappy with you, that means you’ve taken a stand for something.
Get comfortable with criticism — grow a thicker skin.
The skills and values you need to do this well are the same ones you need to be an effective, authentic communicator. If you know what you believe, you can actually show up and deal with the criticism in stride. Your integrity becomes your suit of armor.
Don’t get me wrong: Some positions are unpopular! But voters don’t need to agree with a candidate on everything. Hell, Third Way’s own polling found that 72% of Democratic primary voters “would support someone they don’t agree with on everything as long as they are seen as authentic and true to what they believe.”
Who is the party anyway?
Arguments about what “the party” should do are misplaced. “The party” doesn’t really exist as described in these critiques about litmus tests1 — it’s mostly a loosely-held blob of candidates, electeds, advocates, donors, voters, operatives, and pundits, all of whom play a different role. Making calls for “the party” to do anything is just creating a straw man to yell about.
(But if you want to be specific about “party leadership,” they’re usually the ones with insane litmus tests — look at how long they dragged their feet on embracing Zohran Mamdani after he won the Democratic primary...)
Always ask: Who are the stakeholders?
Anyway: A more precise question about “groups” to ask who their stakeholders are. Who are they accountable to? An advocacy org says they’re fighting for a community might be different than one accountable to that community. If you can’t clearly answer that question, consider how seriously to take their input.
I’d ask the same thing of these think tanks and more moderate groups espousing their own perspectives. Who are their stakeholders?2 (My guess: Donors.)
They might tell you: Our stakeholders are people who care about winning. The unsaid part of that is “and the people arguing with us don’t care about winning” — which may be a smart rhetorical trick, but is a clearly divisive tactic, counter to the arguments about building coalitions.
It reminds me of my toddler, who likes to immediately rebut requests for things like “two minutes until we go home” with “why not 10?” — putting us grown-ups on defense.
If they really cared about winning and only that, they’d have to acknowledge that actually, voters are to the left of party leadership on some issues — for example, on how much the Democratic Party base has moved on Israel — and then would push for change on that front.
On Hasan Piker
Finally, the specific debate about Hasan Piker is exhausting.
(1) Hasan is not the name on the ballot. Full stop. For others to make his campaign participation a liability only further alienates the people who trust him and only him. Having him as a surrogate is a choice the campaign made — Michiganders will respond to that decision accordingly.
(2) Republican members of Congress have said offensive shit, as have many a podcast or streamer host who more moderate or centrist politicians have appeared with.
When centrist Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro appeared on a show with far-right racist musician Ted Nugent, it failed to elicit any response or condemnation from Bennett and Third Way. No one suggested at the time that Shapiro has “taken on all of Nugent’s baggage,” (which includes calling Barack Obama a “subhuman mongrel”) as Bennett’s Piker logic would imply.
If we refuse to engage with anyone who says something we find offensive or worse, we’re making it harder to win.
(3) The president of Third Way told The Bulwark:
“If people really are arguing that the price of winning is becoming like a bigoted misogynist like Hasan Piker, then I’ll take not winning. … What is the point of reviving the Democratic party so it can compete in an age of right-wing populism, if the price of that is you mainstream bigoted, anti-American, misogynistic voices?”
No one is arguing that candidates should be like Hasan Piker. We’re arguing that it’s good politics to reach his audience in order to compete in an age of right-wing populism. (And bad news, but a bigoted, anti-American, misogynist is already president — that’s as mainstream as it gets.)
(4) Just to push this point to the next step: If you don’t want to associate with Hasan Piker, give me an alternative strategy for reaching young disillusioned men. I’d love to hear it.
There is always a risk in who candidates associate with — that’s why historically Democrats have been rigorous about vetting. But this moment requires more risk tolerance than we’ve been comfortable with in order to reach the voters we need.
If we want to engage people not reached by traditional political or legacy media, we have to consider the messiness that might entail.
Building a bigger tent means letting go a little
My bigger frustration with all of this is that some of those claiming the loudest to want a bigger tent are the ones actively making it smaller. What they want is a tent where they define the boundaries.
If you’re against other people’s litmus tests while also issuing your own— whether through questionnaires or lists of exact words not to use — then you don’t actually want a coalition. You want control.
And control — especially coming from an institution that few people trust — is exactly what voters are rejecting right now.
A reminder I wrote a whole book about taking a stand, even when it makes people mad. Pick up a copy in any format you’d like — hardcover, e-book, or audio book (narrated by yours truly) anywhere you get books, including Amazon or Bookshop.org or literally anywhere else. If you have Spotify Premium, you can listen to for free right this very minute.
At some point I’m going to write a newsletter about how your fury at the DNC is almost certainly misplaced. You should probably be mad at them! But not for the reasons you think.
In case you’re curious, one of the guiding ethos we have at Run for Something is that our stakeholders are our candidates. We answer to them, build program for them, and put their needs first.
I think there’s a sense among progressives that associating with someone who you share 80% of values with but the final 20% are problematic to you and connected, either directly or indirectly, with some real harm, makes you a Bad Person, as if you’re endorsing the harm connected to that 20%. But what if by associating with them, you reduce their harm quotient, either by dialing down that 20% to a smaller number, or by nudging some of the harm out of that 20%? This goes beyond electoral endorsements/rallies (all forms of public political association) to actual personal connection and conversation, so it’s kind of out of scope for this article. But it’s how I’m hoping to live my values and dial down harm in the world. And more relevant to Amanda’s work, I think it’s how good candidates, especially at the local level, act toward their electorate. Stand in your principles while bridging connections to those who don’t share all of them.
The notion that the path to winning is through young disaffected men is patently insane. In 2024 men 18-29 were 7% of the vote. Trump won this group by 1% 49-48. If democrats want to win, they ned to focus on women 45–64 years old. Women 45–64 years old were 19% of the vote (more than double young men and almost triple). Despite winning women in every other age bracket, often by large margins, Harris lost these women by 1%, 50-49. That's where democrats should focus.